


veins

by justdoityoufucker



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Snake Sage Mitarashi Anko, Snakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-21 10:43:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14283210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justdoityoufucker/pseuds/justdoityoufucker
Summary: Anko burns Orochimaru's influence from her life.





	veins

She takes the pack of cigarettes she stole from Asuma’s locker, swipes a book of matches from the drawer under the sink full of them. The night is warm, muggy. She lights up on the roof of the dorms, inhales deeply, and exhales the fragrant smoke. They aren’t the good ones, the special ones that the Sarutobi clan makes, but they’ll do.

Anko rubs her eyes with the back of her hand. Her eyeliner is smeared, and it smears more, but she doesn’t care. Her mind is far away from the rooftop, back in the lab, looking at the tubes of children floating in transparent green liquid, serene despite their captivity.

She hadn’t noticed, she hadn’t thought to question her mentor, even despite what he had done to her. If only she had noticed earlier, said something--

Her fingertips press against the smooth skin of her neck. It feels wrong, as if she should be scarred there, the skin tight and painful, but she is not. The inking of the seal is only so deep, though the touch of Orochimaru’s chakra is deeper.

The Hokage will not do anything. It is obvious; who knows better than her how Orochimaru knew he was being considered as a successor? Sarutobi Hiruzen is wise, but foolish, and Anko knows how deep his foolishness will go, when it comes to  _ Shiroi-Hebi-no-Orochimaru _ .

\--

To deal with everything on her own is foolish. Anko knows this, but further she knows there is nobody who she can trust to help her. Hatake and Maito are strong, yes, but they have not had to face Orochimaru. Umino, Asuma and Kurenai are not good choices, their abilities too unrefined and untested. There are others that she considers, but none know as deeply as her how to go against Orohimaru.

So it is up to her; Anko crushes the cigarette out on the roof. She stands and throws her hands out, breathing deeply in the night air. Whether she dies or lives, she intends to deal with it.

It is up to her.

\--

She spends the night preparing, sharpening her weapons, sharpening her mind. Laid-out her arms are enough to equip half the village, but she feels it is not enough. Tantō, kunai, senbon and shuriken, sending off moonlight like blades of light across the walls of her dorm. The quiet sounds of metal on metal are the only noise as she packs them away.

Scrolls packed with other weapons, jutsu and reserved chakra are laid out; Anko counts them carefully, stores them in her weapons pouches. She hopes it will be enough.

When done she runs a bath, soaks for a quarter hour after cleaning herself. It feels as though she will never be free of the stain of her mentor, but the knowledge of what she will do seems to cleanse her. Somehow, she feels as if all the poison running through her veins is being leached out. Anko grasps her hands close, under the near-scalding water, and tells herself that she can do it.

\--

The water drains and she dresses in silence. Not any of her usual outfits, but the uniform navy blues over mesh armour, and over the blues her blackened arm guards and leg guards. Boots with knives hidden in the soles and iron in the toes, and a filtering mask over her mouth and nose complete the outfit.

Her footsteps are silent on the worn tatami. The packed weapons she fits on her belts, the shuriken holster on her left leg. With some regret, she bites a thumb so it bleeds, weaves the signs for a summoning.

It is more noise than she wants, and she waits with baited breath for a minute, two.

Metsushi is nearly six feet long, oily black and purple and whip-thin. She coils around Anko’s right leg.

“You have made a decision,” the snake says.

Anko doesn’t answer; she doesn’t need to. She absently pets the snake she raised from an egg, slides the window open. “You may leave when you wish,” Anko says.

“We are blood,” Metsushi hisses, “I leave with your death, no sooner.”

The resolve solidifies in her chest, and Anko throws herself out the window.

\--

The lab is quiet when she appears at the secret entrance. Seeing the door again, glazed with seals and warnings, sets something off in her chest. For a minute she struggles to breathe, to unclench her fisted hands and tensed shoulders.

_ You must do this _ , she tells herself, and breathes deeply, exhales through her nose.

Metsushi coils a little closer, a little tighter, and Anko feels reassured. She gently touches the door with her chakra; he didn’t add any precautions since she left. She works through the layers of wards gently, and after a few minutes the door’s lock clicks. Opened.

Anko pauses, breathes deeply again and looks up at the moon. Desperately, she hopes she will see it again.

\--

The lab is empty, but it is always empty. She pauses at the tubes; touches each. Maybe the lab will be found and they will be saved, but she cannot do that for them.

Anko heads deeper. She knows where Orochimaru will be--in his office, going over the day’s data and planning changes for the next. He might even be expecting her. Well, she hates to disappoint.

\--

“I did not expect you,” he says when she enters. Funny, that. There’s something like surprise in his voice. “Sensei always did make strange decisions.”

“The Hokage did not send me,” Anko says. Except for Metsushi and her armor, she is defenseless; she doesn’t even have a weapon drawn. “I am doing this for  _ me _ .”

He looks up from his papers, gold eyes unreadable. In one smooth movement, he stands, and drops his haori. “Come then, let us see what you have learned,” Orochimaru says, spreading his arms wide.

\--

Metsushi acts as something like a counterbalance as well as a whip. She grasps torch brackets and bared pipes on the ceiling, sending the two of them flying through the rooms after Orochimaru.

There seems to be a hint of fear in his movements, but Anko does not have the time nor the ability to consider that. She moves, fluid and flying, sending senbon and shuriken when she sees holes in his guard. But he isn’t even taking the fight seriously, rarely sending jutsu and weapons at her. Perhaps she should have anticipated that; perhaps she should take advantage of it.

\--

_ What the hell is the point of this? _ Anko asks herself as she pauses, upside-down on the ceiling. Metsushi keeps an eye on her sensei, who has stopped and is preparing a jutsu of some sort.

_ I came here to kill this man, _ she tells herself, closing her eyes and slapping her hands into  _ hitsuji _ .  _ I cannot afford weakness or hesitation. _

She opens her eyes, and her sight flickers to Orochimaru. Her breathing is calm, slow like she had been taught by the  _ Yama-no-hebi _ , and she gathers nature chakra to herself, feeling her eyes change shape and her skin harden.

Orochimaru pauses in his seals, eyes widening, face darkening in anger. “ _ You _ ,” he hisses, furious, “have defiled the Ryūchi Cave.”

“And you,” Metsushi hisses, raising up to coil around Anko’s shoulders, “know nothing, old man.”

\--

To see her sensei struggle and fall is heartwrenching,  _ horrible _ . Anko knows she shouldn’t feel that, but part of her still feels loyal to the man who took her under his wing. She hates herself, even as she sends Metsushi out with a crack to wrap around his neck.

“The student surpasses the teacher,” Orochimaru says. His voice is raw, his left arm broken and his skin crossed with cuts. He is kneeling, chokes as Metsushi tightens.

Anko keeps her grip on the thin snake’s tail, steps closer and feels the nature energy slipping away. The snake looks at her with dark eyes, waiting for a sign or signal.

“Do it,” he chokes out, grinning at her, “though you will rid the world of me, you will not rid yourself of me, or my legacy. You  _ are _ my legacy.”

“I am my own legacy,” Anko says, though she feels she doesn’t mean it, “and I will rid myself of you. Even if it takes months,  _ years _ , I will do it.”

Orochimaru gives her a look, as if to say, “I have my doubts.”

Anko flickers her eyes to Metsushi, and the snake tightens, coils around the man’s neck several times more. The crack as his bones break is releasing, final.

\--

Anko drops to her knees, her breathing ragged. Nearly all her chakra was gone, used to balance the nature energy and sustain Metsushi’s summoning.

“Not yet,” the snake says, curling around her yet again, lending her strength and energy to push herself up, stagger over to the corpse that was her teacher. “Not yet.”

She draws within her, makes the signs needed to generate a stream of white-yellow flame that consumes the corpse. Metsushi spits fire as well, burning the flames hotter and hotter, until it consumes Orochimaru in his entirety.

All that remains is ash, smoldering as the fire dies out, and Anko falls into unconsciousness.

\--

Her senses feel dulled when she awakens, and Anko thinks,  _ have I died? _

It is pitch black, or maybe her eyes are closed; she cannot summon the energy to open them. She drifts in the sea of darkness, half-hoping she is dead for what she has done.  _ Murder, it was murder _ , she tells herself, but somewhere in her mind another thought arises, a thought that tells her,  _ you did right, you did right, you did right.  _ It chimes out, strong and warm, and she feels herself drifting off again, more content, less guilty.

\--

Again she awakens, or maybe she awakens for the first time. Her eyes no longer feel too heavy, and she cracks them open to sunlight from a half-open window. She can hear birds chirping as they migrate, the rustling of dried leaves in the gentle breeze.

Her skin is warm where the sun hits it, and she rolls her head over, to the window, the blue sky that seems infinite with possibilities. And it hits her with a suddenness that she cannot quite fathom. She has done it; she is free.

And Anko cries, a bittersweet smile on her face.


End file.
